


The Barley Field Interlude

by Adelheid_Desgoffe_Taxis



Series: Zubrowka: A World Inside Out [5]
Category: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 09:46:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1978233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adelheid_Desgoffe_Taxis/pseuds/Adelheid_Desgoffe_Taxis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>…In the middle of nowhere… (A minute of amateurish philosophy).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Barley Field Interlude

... ... ...

 

\- Now I shall tell you what you're really afraid of.

\- I am afraid of the dark.

\- The evening darkness?

\- This too. For dusk offers us up to the power of the ghosts.

But most of all I fear the darkness at night, for everything turns grey in the same manner at night.

 

_A. and B. Strugatski, “Hard to Be a God”_

 

Where the greyness triumphs, it is always the black who come to power.

 

_Ibidem_

 

Chaos reigns.

 

 _Lars von Trier, "Antichrist"_  

 

... ... ...

 

Now and again. Chaos, chaos in the snow-covered field somewhere in the Zubrowkian Lowlands, only chaos all around. Chaos whispering in the bare branches and boughs of the scarce mid-autumn trees flanking the railway. Chaos flying swiftly on the wings of the crisp chilly wind unpleasantly freezing Corporal Franz Müller’s bare hands and his hatless head with very short, army-cut hair. The primal natural chaos tightly shrouding the once-fabled Lutz Police Militia soldiers, alias Grey Foxes, now cuddled together beside the railroad bed and looking harmless and pathetic in their old grey uniforms and tattered long coats, in spite of their freshly oiled carbine rifles and their stocky, thick-necked, fierce appearance. Everything and everywhere, just the bloody unending chaos. The men freezing now in this darned field under the command of Corporal Müller would’ve surely named it some other things, but Franz, with a year of university education behind him and many clever books having been once read for pleasure, knew exactly the right word.

 

Franz Müller had previously, in fact, been a bright, promising student at the Kaiser Frederick University in Lutz. He had managed to finish only his freshman year in their respected Law School, however, because after the Great Depression reverberations had belatedly reached Zubrowka, the severe economic crisis rendered his family’s once large and lucrative Pfeiffelstadt farm bankrupt literally in the twinkle of an eye. Thus, he could no longer afford to pay for his courses. In addition, the establishment itself has quickly deteriorated, and after half of it had been broken up, the best lecturers left it of their own accord or were dismissed from office by the increasingly mistrustful authorities. The failure to complete his education left Franz very much saddened and disappointed, and he saw no other option for himself but to try and join the Grey Foxes who acted at the same time as the small country’s armed forces and its police. The force in question had then been in quite a need of fresh staff, and they readily welcomed the well-fit and aspiring young man into their ranks. Actually, the former student became one of the most steadfast soldiers (as, frankly, was often the case with similar persons). Now, after almost two whole years of service, Franz seemingly changed very much. On the surface he looked rough, blank, rigid, inexorable; but in essence, he was still the same nice, hesitating, sometimes sheepish first-year student who had with everburning interest attended the lectures of the most renowned professors and spent his nights not in the company of drunken martinets or cheap street girls, like now, but in his dormitory room, hungrily writing out brilliant and opportune thoughts of the best lawyers and philosophers of the past into a thick notebook worn with everyday use.

 

And now Franz and his squad were here, in the middle of nowhere, because the situation on the longer, western border of the small Alpine country – that is, the border with Germany – had, since the last summer, suddenly become very uncertain and precarious and was presumably fuelled by some still unknown subjects located right here in Zubrowka. So the Police Militia, Cpl. Müller and his subordinate privates among them, have been ordered to carefully check all the passengers travelling inland from the Western Highlands, with the purpose of disclosing any potential spies of the Reich.

 

Franz was standing in the middle of nowhere and thinking about chaos. Yes, man, yes. Chaos reigned, chaos ruled everywhere. Chaos ruled in the West, as the people of Zubrowka were told by the communists and the social democrats and the most politically well-versed officers of the Lutz Militia, but the former were ruthlessly hunted down and executed or imprisoned, while the latter were too scanty and idealistic for hoping to change the general atmosphere in the backwater, provincial mountain country. Chaos ruled in the East, behind the Polish Sanitary Cordon, as the people of Zubrowka were constantly told by the hard-case nationalists in power headed by General-President Oswald Ořeška, First Minister Bulcsu Vastag and Lutz Mayor Mihaly Barishnokov, who were known by several ironical nicknames at the same time: Three Boars (because of their exceptional weights and girths), Three Beggars (because of the constant stream of money they mooched from various world leaders under the pretense of the country’s poverty and then squandered away on mountain villas and high-end amusements) and, the most neatly and commonly, Three Swindlers (because that’s who they really were). These men had long ago recognized the chaos inside their heads and warmly welcomed it; and they had learned pretty well how to create and ignite and stimulate the same chaos in the minds and actions of others, with the sole purpose of managing it on their own account, so that people would believe or denounce virtually _anything_ they were told to. Therefore, the chaos in question freely reigned and ravaged across the small impoverished country dangerously squeezed between Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia, and it was precisely this chaos which the nation’s chieftains had declared to be the perfect, eternal, inviolable order of things.

 

But of course it was just another lie. However much you would like to believe that the much-coveted order ruled every minute of our wretched life, you had to always keep in mind one simple, unsavory, unpalatable truth. Order was only an illusion. The world – and everything in it – was ruled by chaos. Chaos only, residing in every person’s head. And exactly for this reason the existence of the “order” of any kind was out of the question, because all attempts to install it inevitably ended in failure. The seeming order was only an illusion meticulously supported by those who had despaired to vanquish the chaos inside their own brains and chosen instead to make use of it with the greatest possible benefit. If you intended to battle the chaos in the world, you had first to battle the chaos inside your own head. But you were never able to do so, because this chaos was an integral part of your very consciousness, and without it, you ceased to exist as a human being. That’s why every attempt to maintain the so-called order ended only and invariably in still more chaos, and even while your conscience were obstinately telling you that you must battle the evil at all costs, your mind would insolently cut in and argue that all your noble endeavors would have to be slightly corrected, and then slightly more, and more, and more, until they would bring in nothing but only more evil. And guess why?.. Because you could not hope to fight the outer evil while this same evil reigned inside your own head. Evil which was Chaos. Against Good which was Order. Evil won. Always. Invariably.

 

The worldly chaos existed only because so did the chaos inside yourself. The former was the direct consequence of the latter, and it was the only reason why this world, once offered to us humans clean and bright and sinless, had turned into the dark, scary, merciless place we now inhabited. A world turned inside out. Hell instead of heaven. Evil instead of Good. No one was able to defeat that evil. Not even the force Franz was a part of.

 

It was such a shame that the once legendary and invincible Police Militia was now in the doldrums, having lamentably lost the impact of its former authority and expertise and being constantly and steadfastly displaced from the streets by the so-called “private agents” and “district representatives” and other shady characters of similar sorts. But then, it was really no wonder, for this mucker perfectly fit with the general state of the chaos in which the country has remained for so long, since the very first days of the Great Slaughter. Now and then Franz even faint-heartedly wished he had continued his blessed existence as the heir of a bankrupt Highlands farmer and never got himself mixed up in all this crap. For it would be much better for everyone. For his work was exhausting and ungrateful. For whatever he would try to do now, on his current post, was and would always be decidedly meaningless. Meaningless, meaningless, meaningless.

 

Waiting for the next train from Nebelsbad which was scheduled to arrive in the matter of minutes, Franz remembered an invective which his commanding officer Captain Albert Henckels, the last hope of the Lutz Militia, “The voice of common sense”, as he was known among his subordinates, once launched:

 

“Oh, you, the cultural workers of a refined, highly cultivated society! Well, well, you learned, esteemed people of this land, this bulwark of the greatest cosmopolitan culture! Why was it that you’ve overlooked those “Zickzacks” which are knocking hard on the doors of our borders? Why have you ignored the ruthless thugs under the names of brave “agents”? Where have you been all this time, the pillars of the nation?.. After all, these scoundrel gangs, this drunken rabble filth which have got downright wild from their newfound power, have been bossing around for a long, long time, at the behest of private agents and the like, next door to yourself and your little sham paradise on earth… And to think that _you,_ the smartest, the most talented, the most astute, have paid absolutely no attention to _them,_ have footled them away, as if simply unwilling to get yourself soiled with this dirt... Further still, I’ll tell you what: whilst you were having fun making woodprints of lesbians and enjoying your fancy cakes and skiing high in the mountains – it was _then_ that on the heels of this drunken rabble filth had the very force risen to power that longs to enslave you and all of us, to immerse us into a horrible abyss of hunger, tyranny, poverty, inflation, and epidemics”.

 

The train emerged in the distance out of the white nowhere, decisively speeding through nowhere, into nowhere. Another express to Lutz. The thick plume of smoke was drifting out of the locomotive funnel seemingly in a straight line, but in fact, chaotically, as did everything else in the world. At once the soldier on duty urgently signaled for the driver to stop the machine.

 

Suddenly, in the depth of his yet another despondency, Franz heard a voice inside his head which unmistakably belonged to his favorite university professor, the philosopher known as most learned Dr. Zeylick, whom the colleagues respectfully styled none other than “The light of wisdom”:

 

“But, my clever gifted boy, _chaos_ in fact has its own _order._ The order which creates rules for the chaos itself… And thus, it is precisely this order which lets Good win – at times only, yes, but at times most justified and most convenient. It’s just that everything good needs sufficient time to be done. Only evil deeds can be performed in a moment. So you worry yourself over this predicament no more. Order always seems to find its way out, in the end”.

 

The approaching train clankingly, strainedly, as if very unwillingly, slowed down its speed and finally came to a halt. The squad reluctantly started moving, lifting up their heavy rifles, their hobnailed boots hollowly pounding on the frozen ground of the field. Well, whoever the passengers would turn out to be this time, every one of them was to be treated, so to say, without regard for rank or anything, with an air of the same unbending authority. For sure the soldiers performing their thankless duty would be once again called lunatic swine fascists assholes or maybe other similar words, but they would pay no attention to such insults. After all, in the middle of the raging chaos the common people wouldn’t know the truth if it hit them squarely in the face. Franz Müller and his men understood it well. And anyway, the citizens had luckily still not seen the _real_ fascist lunatic swine assholes, and it was the Lutz Militia’s work to make sure they would not see them for as long enough as possible. For while the once-legendary Foxes at least wore grey, _those_ men wore black, _black_ , for God’s sake, not _grey_ but _black_ , and if _the black_ were to ever get control over this long-suffering country, then it would better tumble into an abyss right now than let them win.

 

The Corporal sighed, frowned, looked one more time at the dreary snowy landscape around him, and led his grim and tired men inside the first coach of the express.

 

…Of course, Franz didn’t know on that day that he had very little time left for him. That after only three months, he would be killed while desperately fighting off the enemy troops during the winter Lutz Blitz by a treacherous cut-throat from the First Black Squadron of _Der Zubrowken Zuruf Partei_ alias _Der Zickzack_.

 

... ... ...

 

From an article _"Will There Be War? Tanks At Border"_ ( Trans-Alpine Yodel, Friday, October 19th, 1932).

 

“ _The development of a highly enlightened intellectual mittel-Europa limned with the glow of artistic abundance, soaring with the greatest music, architecture, literature, poetry, and scientific advance in the history of humankind – has lead us directly down the path of self-destruction and blackest evil_. There can be no satisfactory explanation. There can be no satisfactory understanding. There can be no satisfaction”.

 

... ... ...

 

There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.

 

_M. Gustave H._

 

... ... ...

**Author's Note:**

> The newspaper excerpt is from Akademie of Zubrowka Historical Archives.


End file.
